The next day found Rebecca Steinbeck working in her office in Philadelphia. Sunday or not, she’d call this office home until Election Day. Her sister complained about Rebecca’s insistence they work out of Philly, and it was bothersome to commute from New York, but this way, they could claim residency in a swing state. Rebecca had insisted both she and Claire register to vote in Pennsylvania.
Every vote counts.
Beyond being sisters, Claire and Rebecca were frequently mistaken for twins. Both had alabaster skin and blonde hair, not to mention both enjoyed working seventy-hour weeks, but that was where the similarities ended. Rebecca’s five-foot frame didn’t bother her, but Claire’s height had made her the obvious choice to embody the family’s name and prestige, and she’d gone into high finance after graduating from Harvard. Rebecca, on the other hand, considered herself noble for working the same hours as her sister but only taking a small fraction of Claire’s salary. She’d made her bones managing state legislative races for Democrats across the country before cashing out last year to run a super PAC tasked with hitting President Brooks through negative ads.
That was a nice dream, she thought, sitting at a desk on her laptop, poring over convention footage from the past week.
A bruising primary had sapped Begaye of the ability to run his own positive bio spots, and so now it fell to The American Dream Fund to boost his favorability numbers in the swing states that would determine the presidential election. Along with recording the speeches, Rebecca’s staff had captured man-on-the-street-style interviews of Begaye delegates during the DNC last week. She’d use that footage, interspersed with clips from the senator’s speech, to create a thirty-second bio ad that could go on TV, plus a fifteen-second pre-roll spot to run before YouTube videos online.
“Sis?”
Seated at a table with her laptop out, Rebecca heard Claire enter the room that served as office space, living space, and kitchen, all at once. Her sister always teased that they could afford more space, but why bother?
A dollar towards comfort here is a dollar not being spent out on the streets. After all, her great-grandfather hadn’t gotten rich writing about poverty in order for his heirs to spend his fortune frivolously. Even her laptop was a decade old.
“The Raker family’s in for a quarter million,” Claire continued.
Her sister’s voice intruded on Rebecca’s concentration, and she furrowed her brow in a quest to find the perfect music to run with the ad she was editing. Although, perhaps I do need to buy better headphones.
“Great,” she said.
Flipping on a light, Claire removed the headphones, crouched down to Rebecca’s height, and stuck a wet finger in her ear.
“Hey! Grow up!”
“Did you hear what I said? We don’t have to be homeless…yet.”
“Oh, please,” Rebecca said. “You could live on ten thousand a year if you really had to.”
Cracking open a beer from their mini fridge, Claire sipped it before looking over Rebecca’s shoulder at the ad. “We’re Steinbecks. We don’t settle.”
“Right.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “How many husbands have you had, now?”
“And yet I never stay.” Taking a seat, Claire kicked up her feet dangerously close to the laptop. Rebecca pursed her lips as she pushed her sister’s legs to the floor.
“The Rakers said you did well on MSNBC,” Claire said.
“And what did you think?”
“Does it matter? I’m not the one signing the checks.”
Rebecca sighed audibly as she turned to face her sister. It was clear she wouldn’t be able to get any work done until Claire was placated with an actual conversation. Whatever that woman wanted, she always got.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Rebecca said. “You don’t even want legalization, and yet the second your old boss returned, you begged me to let you raise money for us.”
“I worked for Aditya for a long time, but then I crossed him,” Claire explained. “Guys like that, in my industry, if you cross them, you’d better kill them. For better or worse, my fate’s tied to Begaye’s now.”
“Aditya isn’t even running Adrsta anymore though, is he? I thought Chad took over when you started this PAC?”
Claire’s nostrils flared. “But Aditya works for the president now. The Steinbeck name is officially on the shit list of the most powerful people in the world. The Aditya thing, Chad having a hard-on for Brooks, my reputation as a slut, it all combined to form a huge pile of shit.”
“Don’t call yourself that.” Rebecca’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the table and hissed the words.
“Why not? I like dick; I’ll own that. The number of times I heard Chad or some other bro talking about a chick he was railing; the double standard is ridiculous.”
Every time Rebecca had this conversation with Claire, it always ended in a fight. The two of them were just so different; it was better to change the topic. “You decide if you’re gonna leave your husband yet?”
Claire showed all her pearly whites. “You decide if you’re gonna leave yours?”
“I am, actually,” Rebecca said. She enjoyed watching her sister’s eyes widen in surprise. “Yeah, at least one of us is decisive. He moved out last weekend. Our lawyers are meeting in a few days to get the process started.”
Claire’s voice softened. “Becca…”
“You haven’t called me that since we were kids. There’s no need to start again now. This is for the best. Turns out being with Ben was a phase, not being a lesbian.”
Now it was Claire’s turn to sigh. Blowing a raspberry, the dark-red lipstick she wore clashed against her white teeth as her lips flapped opened and closed like a door. “Are you seriously revisiting your college years? Marcy, or whatever her name was?”
“Maadhini.” Rebecca sighed again as she said it, but this sigh was filled with promise as she remembered long nights of passion followed by longer bouts of laughter.
I made a mistake.
“Hello?” Claire waved a hand, breaking her reverie. “Right, she was Indian. Now I remember.”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes, preparing for another fight. Like every other argument they’d had over the years, this one also had no end. Standing up, her attempt to appear intimidating failed miserably as she remembered she basically looked like a mini-me of Claire. “Just say what you want to say. No need to beat around the bush.”
Claire poked a finger at her chest. “I’m always looking out for you, little sister. Girls like her aren’t built for our life.”
“Because she wasn’t born with WP?”
“Fuck yes, because she wasn’t born with WP.” Taking a final, long sip from her beer bottle, Claire chucked the bottle in a trash bin, breaking the glass inside. “I won’t make any apologies for speaking the truth: WP makes some people goofy, and that girl was one of them.”
The last time Rebecca had taken a swing at her sister, their parents had thrown her into an anger management class. Hands in her pockets, tugging at the loose threads inside her jeans, she decided to change the subject again. “At least you’re voting for Begaye.”
“Only because I have to,” Claire said. “You know I supported Harmon in the primary. Too bad he got into the race too late.”
“I would’ve disowned you if you’d gone to work for that Republican-lite fossil,” Rebecca said. “You know, the question I got from that MSNBC woman is going to come up again. Begaye is anti-super PAC, always talking about the need to get big money out of politics. He might disavow us at some point.”
“You just leave that to me. This super PAC is going to run whether he wants it or not.”
Returning to work on her laptop, Rebecca watched Begaye’s speech over again as he talked about balancing the need for WP equity with the need for stricter rules to ensure that what Rakshan Baliga had done wouldn’t be possible again.
“Our brothers and sisters are dying in prison,” he said. “But we must also recognize that, just like other drugs, too much WP with no regulation ruins lives. Just ask Jerome Johnson’s mother. Democrats must lead both boldly and responsibly.”
“Ignore the muted applause of the convention hall,” Claire said. “That line tests well in our focus groups, especially with independents.”
I spend a few hours briefing her on how campaigns are run and all of a sudden she thinks she's an expert... Still stewing over their conversation, Rebecca held her tongue. Her sister had always thought a Steinbeck had it in them to master any subject within a day.
“I don’t know how many more times I can show you the polling data,” she said, instead. “We can gain more votes by bringing over non-voting liberals than we can by going after these so-called independents.”
Claire ignored that.
Rebecca sighed. We speak more loudly in silence than in words.
When Claire did respond, it was to move to yet another subject. “It’s too bad about Rakshan, but he brought it on himself.”
“I can’t believe you voted Republican in the midterms.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes!” Rebecca began pacing around the small office, hands pulling at her hair. “You believe this whole nonsense about needing a WP Force?”
“We have real enemies in the world, Rebecca.”
“Then why are you here?!”
Claire took a step back, looking as if she’d been slapped. Pointing at Rebecca’s laptop, she noted the standing ovation Senator Begaye received as he finished his speech. “For power. What else is there?”
Closing her eyes, Rebecca counted to ten to stop from screaming, and when she did, she saw Maadhini’s face.
What else is there? There’s love.
Dubuque, Iowa, the "Masterpiece of the Mississippi," sat across the river from Wisconsin. That made the two-state campaign trek that Joseph Begaye had started this morning easy. After having an intimate breakfast with a few select members of the United Auto Workers, he and his aide, Roger Manning, now waited in a staging room at the union hall while their top surrogate in the area, Iowa's Secretary of State, prepared to announce the senator for a speech on how "Worker Rights are Human Rights."
Is it still nothing more than a corny line if I actually believe it?
The Midwest made Joseph as uncomfortable as a dog in a tree, but he knew there was another important reason for visiting Dubuque, besides its proximity to Wisconsin. Dubuque County was one of dozens that had flipped from blue to red for Brooks, and Roger had assured him it was important to visit every single one.
"Senator, can you stop biting your lip?" His aide's eyebrows rose, a grin on his lips.
"Remind me again why I'm doing this?"
"Running for president, or being here, specifically?"
Joseph tugged at his dark jeans, annoyed yet again that he couldn't wear his suit because, in Roger's words, "You look like a U.S. Senator."
That's exactly what I am! And I worked hard to become one!
Ignoring Roger's question, he continued to grumble. "I could be in Arizona. That's a swing state, right? And it's right next to home; I'd get to see Ajei and the kids at the end of the day."
"We could spend less time in what you affectionately call 'the podunk states' if you'd bothered to win some of them during the primaries."
Despite himself, Joseph let out a deep laugh. "Listen, son," he said, grinning. "Was I right, or was I right? We lost Iowa and New Hampshire, sure, but those same tactics led to domination in South Carolina. In Illinois. In New York and California."
Roger tapped his foot impatiently, resembling a frustrated giant. Joseph smiled again, remembering how Ajei had wondered if she’d had enough food to feed the six-foot-two aide the first time he'd come home for dinner.
"Just because you got lucky once doesn't mean we can replicate it in November," Roger said.
"If there's one thing this experience has taught me," Joseph said, "it's that, where presidential politics is concerned, being lucky is a lot better than being skilled."
Throughout the entire conversation, Joseph’s body man didn’t say a word. The former Stanford linebacker stood at the door, as still as a member of the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. Leaning in to whisper in Roger's ear, Joseph voiced his admiration for the college graduate he'd hired after the boy's graduation in May.
"Luther's working out well, huh?"
"He's a good one," Roger agreed. "Keeps to himself, memorized your routine, friendly with staff and press. You want me to start thinking about how he'd fit into a Begaye administration?"
Joseph waved the question off. "We're not there yet."
And yet...
"I suppose you wouldn't put me in Iowa unless we had a chance of flipping it, huh?"
"That's right," Roger said. "This is offense for us. We've got a couple routes to 1600 Pennsylvania, but there's only one way Brooks gets re-elected. And that's by sweeping the Midwest. With everything going wrong for him, I still can't believe he loves antagonizing Republicans on the Hill."
I can. Joseph bit his lip, thinking back to the day after the president had vetoed WP legalization despite Hammond's endorsement.
"It all goes back to what I've always said about the man,” Roger said. “He's got the biggest inferiority complex I've ever seen. It wasn't enough to become the Party's nominee, to become president. He's always got to prove he's a big man. And embarrassing a legislative Svengali like Hammond? I'm sure that made him feel like a real big man."
Joseph sighed, placing a hand on Roger's shoulder. Win or lose, he hoped he could convince the man to become his Chief of Staff in whatever job came next. Roger was the only person he knew who wasn't too intimidated to tell him to go to Hell one moment and bullshit with him the next. "It's the same with senators on both sides of the aisle," Joseph said. "Getting elected to the most exclusive club in the world still isn't enough to get these guys out of high school."
As the two shared a laugh, Luther called out. "Senator? They're about to announce you."
Straightening his bolo tie, Joseph told Roger one last thing. "Hey, I was watching MSNBC yesterday."
His aide let out an audible groan. "Why do you insist on watching that garbage? Cable news is poison, especially when you're the guy running for office."
"Yeah, yeah." Joseph waved him off. "You know that Rebecca Steinbeck woman, right? Get a message to her that I don't want a super PAC. If those people were serious about change, they'd take all that money and give me governors and state legislators I can work with after I’m elected."
"Sure," Roger said.
"It's a little thing called federalism," Joseph continued. "There's only so much a president can do from Washington."
"Yeah, yeah." Now Roger waved Joseph off. "I'll handle it, don't worry."
As his boss and Luther left the room, Roger found himself alone with his thoughts. Rebecca's a true believer, but her sister's in charge of the money.
Chewing on his lip, he wondered what could be done. Getting Rebecca Steinbeck to back off would be a fool's errand, but maybe her sister could be manipulated. After all, the problem with craving power was people would do anything to keep it.
If he couldn't steer the politics, he could at least watch the money and influence that.
It was one of the bigger injustices in Aditya's life, walking to Union Square to his old apartment to meet its current resident: Chad Lungford. He'd asked the president for his old apartment back after being pardoned, but Brooks had told him to just be thankful for his freedom.
That apartment is mine, anyway, though.
Pacing through the hustle and bustle of the city, ignoring the calls of street vendors offering him everything from hot dogs to watches, ignoring the elbows that bumped against him as he made his way through the city, Aditya remained focused on his impending meeting with Chad.
I've been killing it for Brooks on TV. It's time to cash in a few favors.
As bad as prison had been for him, it had been even worse for his family. Deepika Shetty had died four months into his prison sentence. The doctors had said it was a stroke, but Aditya knew it had actually been a broken heart.
I'll never forgive Rakshan for what he's taken from me...
Egging Chad's senator uncle on to screw with the boy's ex-girlfriend had been an easy decision, but now it was time to ask for more help. With his mother dead, his father's health had suffered. His father, like most Indian men, had never learned to take care of himself.
Aditya shook his head as he entered what had once been his apartment complex. Approaching the front desk, he asked the building’s manager to buzz Chad, then frowned when the man complied without a second thought.
He doesn't even recognize me.
Aditya tapped his foot against the marble floor as he rode the elevator up to Chad's penthouse. The boy had done this on purpose, he suspected. Having the meeting here instead of at a restaurant—Chad wanted him to see what had once been his and now wasn't. As if having a senator uncle and a defense secretary sister wasn't an adequate enough display of power.
When the doors opened directly to the apartment, Aditya saw Chad had already poured two bourbons. He tried and failed to hide a grimace as the boy waved him in, motioning to the lit fireplace with the crystalline ember bed.
I bought it because it burned with the allure of raw power. And now he gets to enjoy it.
“Thanks for coming,” Chad said.
As the boy handed over a drink, Aditya studied the WP embedded in the screws of his glasses and swallowed a wave of disgust. Alcohol was one thing, but as an ex-con, he'd never taste real freedom again, never be allowed to wear WP again. Whether Chad was flaunting his WP to mess with him or was merely indifferent didn't matter: the blow to his ego was the same.
“I was glad you called,” Aditya said, forcing calmness into his voice. “I actually had a favor to ask. You know how we held up Sadiya's visas? I was wondering if we could fast-track some for my aunt and uncle. They finally have enough money saved up to come over and help my dad buy back his motel business.”
His heart raced as he waited for Chad's response. Ever since his mom had died, his father hadn't been the same, seeking solace in junk food and reality TV. Kaamat Shetty couldn’t eat like that much longer if he wanted to see his seventies, but maybe the motel would give him something to live for.
Chad’s straight nose crinkled as if he’d smelled something rotten. He gulped down his bourbon before answering. “There’s no ‘we.’ The days of me doing you favors is over. The only reason you’re not still in jail is because of me. Be grateful enough for that, Aditya Shitty.”
Aditya pulled at the loose threads in his slacks to keep his temper in check. That nickname had haunted him since grade school. One of Rakshan's buddies had even used it while stealing his apartment, once.
And now this motherfucker has stolen my apartment, too? Before this is over, Chad Lungford, I will see you fall from grace.
“I asked you here to see how the campaign was going," Chad said, breaking Aditya from his thoughts. "You look like shit on TV, but FOX loves booking you. A former felon who’s against legalization and for the president? Perfect match.”
“It’s going well.” Aditya slammed back his bourbon in one gulp before pouring himself another without asking for permission. It was a small act of defiance—the only kind available to him now.
“You know,” Chad drawled, “I was offered executive director of the Brooks super PAC. Decided to let Whit Pryor have that job, since this one pays more. Not to say I don’t have an ear close to the president at all times. Have you met my sister, Kaitlin?”
Aditya looked at his watch before responding. I'm impressed it took him this long before dropping her name.
“No,” he said. “Karthik says good things, though.”
“Yeah. Karthik has been a good lapdog for her. It’s important to keep these things in the family.”
Aditya had spent the first thirty years of his life eating shit nonstop and smiling about it, and he pulled on all that experience now in order not to cringe in front of this child. A lion doesn’t have to bare its teeth, he thought, as he poured Chad another bourbon. “Great news about Rakshan. I heard one of his buddies almost died.”
“Yes.” Chad finished the offered drink before pouring himself a third. “With any luck, he’ll be dead before the election. Then we can push further into Africa and Asia.”
Aditya raised his eyebrows. “And what if these countries decide they don’t want America interfering in their affairs?”
“That part’s easy,” Chad said. Inhaling the third drink, he poured himself a fourth to sip on leisurely. “You think Guatemala wanted us stealing their WP? Yeah, Congress approved aid for them in the budget, but the president decides whether that aid’s actually released or not.”
Aditya bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. The boy was as dumb as ever, sharing information with whomever would listen. The child had no discipline, screaming about his latest secret from a rooftop, as if a secret had no power unless shared.
“President Brooks is holding up foreign aid to blackmail sovereign governments?” Aditya asked.
Chad coughed on his bourbon as his face froze in obvious fear. “Man, that’s between you and me, you know? Seriously, that stays between us.”
Aditya smiled, relishing the break in Chad's voice. “No problem. Gotta keep things in the family, right?”
“Exactly! I was going to order some takeout; want to hang out a bit?”
I'd rather kiss a mongoose. “No, thanks,” Aditya said with exaggerated politeness. “I need to get back to my father in Hoboken. His health has taken a turn for the worse.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Just allergies.”
Chad got up to call Aditya an Uber. “Hey, email me your uncle and aunt’s information. I’ll get it all squared away, no problem.”
“Thanks.” Aditya shook Chad's hand as he waited for the elevator. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
“Like you said,” Chad said, “we gotta look out for each other.”
Aditya smiled as he stepped inside the elevator and watched the door close on Chad's still-panicked face.
One day, I’ll be living in that apartment again.